


luster

by erzi



Category: Sarai-ya Goyou | House of Five Leaves
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 17:16:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,719
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17187095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erzi/pseuds/erzi
Summary: The sake cup makes no sound as Yaichi sets it down on the low-lying table.He leans back on his left arm with unintentional grace. "You came," he tells Masa, the light from a lantern at the room's corner flickering on his face.Masa blinks at him from below the door frame before he carefully enters this space, Yaichi's space, and feels pressure on his rib cage the moment he slides the thin door shut. "You asked for me," he mumbles, sitting opposite of him.





	luster

The sake cup makes no sound as Yaichi sets it down on the low-lying table.

He leans back on his left arm with unintentional grace. "You came," he tells Masa, the light from a lantern at the room's corner flickering on his face.

Masa blinks at him from below the door frame before he carefully enters this space, Yaichi's space, and feels pressure on his rib cage the moment he slides the thin door shut. "You asked for me," he mumbles, sitting opposite of him.

"You didn't _have_ to come. It's quite late." He turns his head to the open window, toward the darkness that has swallowed the town. The moon is as large and round as a peach, and seems just as ripe to burst, glowing with such richness. "Weren't you sleeping?"

Yaichi still faces the night, and in his drowsiness, Masa half thinks this was addressed not to him but the moon. Hence his reply comes a little late. "I was."

"You could have waved away the girl I sent to wake you and fallen back asleep."

"That would have been rude to you."

"Wasn't me asking for your company at this hour rude as well?"

Masa hunches his shoulders, eyes falling on the cup in front of Yaichi.

He hears Yaichi's quiet chuckle, the one reserved for when Masa has done something that Yaichi considers amusing, to Masa's puzzlement. Yaichi faces him again, taking the sake cup and bringing it close to his lips, but not yet drinking.

"Aren't you wondering why I asked for you?"

"I am," Masa says, "but I figured you wouldn't tell me." He looks to the table's side, where another cup waits. "Did you want someone to drink with?"

Yaichi considers the cup as well. "I suppose so."

"I can't handle my liquor." Masa relaxes his shoulders. "But I can talk with you, if you'd like."

"I suppose so." Yaichi drinks the sake all at once and pours himself more. "I couldn't sleep," he adds.

"On a night as pleasant as this?"

"When you're around," Yaichi continues, ignoring him, "things happen I can't explain."

Masa turns his eyes to the tatami floor, unsure of what to say to that. An apology?

He doesn't need to reply, as Yaichi is not finished speaking. "Since you bring such strangeness with you, I thought if you were here, maybe I would finally sleep."

This makes Masa pick up his head, and a pout tugs at the corner of his mouth. "That is your reason?"

Yaichi returns Masa's mild disappointment with a placid smile. "I suppose so." And he drinks.

Masa pauses. _I'm disappointed?_

"Are you certain you don't want some?" Yaichi asks him. He motions to the jar of sake with his head. "There is plenty. I have no other drink to offer you."

"I'm certain." He rubs the last trace of sleep away from his eyes.

When he opens them again, Yaichi is smiling at him, but as mystifyingly as ever. "While you were sleeping, were you dreaming?"

"Was I dreaming?" Masa murmurs to himself, thinking about it. Fragments condense in his mind. There had been... something silver. He'd touched something silver. Pretty and fine and silver. Something quite like the luster of Yaichi's hair in the moonlight.

He startles himself, bumping his knee below the table. Yaichi's cup tumbles on its side, spilling precious sake drops.

Yaichi raises an eyebrow at him.

"I- I apologize," Masa says.

Yaichi wipes the sake with his sleeve. "So even you have sex dreams."

Heat rises quickly to Masa's ears. "It- it wasn't like that."

"Oh?" That unreadable smile is now tinged with smugness. "Then why that reaction?"

There is no easy way out of this question. At his throat, his voice goes dry, and he tries to recede into himself like a turtle into its shell. "I think," he whispers to the table, "you were there."

He is expecting another light laugh.

He receives silence.

It drags and drags, and Masa does not want to look at his face, at whatever mask Yaichi dons, so he adds, "I dreamed of something soft and silver. The way your hair is lit by the moon reminded me."

As soon as he says this, he regrets it; rather than it being a reasonable explanation, he has admitted to Yaichi he dreamed of him. The earth beneath the tatami sinks from his heavy shame.

Finally, Yaichi speaks. "I see," he says, in a tone Masa has never heard him use, and he cannot place this either. It is so odd he looks up, wondering if his expression reflects his voice. But whatever that emotion was, it is gone, as Yaichi wears his usual neutral demeanor.

A cup of that sake doesn't seem so terrible now.

Enigmatic as Yaichi is to Masa, to Yaichi, he is an open book. Yaichi takes the empty second cup, fills it halfway, and slides it to him.

Masa quietly thanks him and takes a single sip. Even that stings, bringing tears to his eyes.

"Don't stop talking," Yaichi says, almost commands. "I have to sleep, after all."

"I thought my presence was enough." He furrows his brow, thinking. "Yaichi-dono, are you saying it's my speaking that puts you to sleep?"

"Hmm." A smile. "Perhaps."

A sip.

Yaichi rests his elbow on the table. "I mean it as a compliment," he says, chin on top of his hand. "You have a calm, measured way of speaking. It's natural to be at ease when hearing it."

Masa tucks a strand of his loosened hair behind his ear, which he idly rubs, like it might take away the spreading heat. "It's nothing special."

"Here's another compliment." He closes an eye, and with his free hand traces Masa's shape in the air, sending a shiver slow up Masa's spine. "Wearing your hair down suits you. When you have it up, it makes your face look somewhat tight. But this makes you look younger and more open." He puts his palm flat on the table. "More you."

Masa's hand stills, and he swivels his eyes up as if he might see his own hair to judge for himself. "Really?"

Yaichi's lip remains curled up, and he takes a drink.

Masa looks at Yaichi's hair. _I don't think I have seen him with his hair down_. He weaves his fingers around the small sake cup. _How would it look like?_   he wonders, and the image of a silver cascade comes to him like in his dream.

"Can you see the moon from where you're sitting?"

He blinks himself from the reverie only to drink in the real thing. But briefly. He can't seem to maintain eye contact for long, and turns to the window. "I can."

"The view is better from here. You're about to hide away in the corner." Yaichi pats the emptiness beside him.

He could have politely declined, could have simply gone back to his room. He doesn't. It would be simple to blame the alcohol, but even Masa knows two sips are not enough. He sits next to Yaichi, two hand widths away. From there, Masa can smell the sake on him, mingled with what makes Yaichi himself. It's stronger than it should be. Curious, Masa reaches for the jar of alcohol. It is lighter than expected.

"You were drinking before I got here," he says.

"I never said I hadn't been."

"The jar is almost empty." He puts it back down, frowning at Yaichi. "You shouldn't drink so much."

"Masa," Yaichi says, a sigh in the windless night, "this isn't what I had in mind when I said you should keep talking."

"Sorry," he mumbles, out of habit. And frowns. "No, I'm not sorry for that. Drinking too much is unhealthy."

"You're here now looking out for me," Yaichi says, the lilting way he ends his sentence sounding like he has something else to add, but he doesn't.

Masa glances at the moon. It indeed is better seen here; he has a wider view of the inky sky, of the shadowed suggestions of buildings at the mercy of the night. Round as the moon may be tonight, as intense as its light is, the distance between Masa and it is godly. With a trick of the eye and perspective he can pretend to cup it, but the moon remains in the sky on its lonesome, unfathomably far.

"Do you look at the moon often, Yaichi-dono?" he asks Yaichi, turning his head to face him.

Yaichi's eyes are closed. He sways imperceptibly.

Masa shifts closer. "Yaichi-dono?" he tries again, in a softer voice.

Yaichi falls – no, that's too brusque; he _sinks_ into Masa's shoulder, as carelessly elegant as the light of the moon palpably dripping over them.

_He really fell asleep_ , Masa thinks, and the weight of the moonlight, the weight of Yaichi is heavy, but not unpleasant. At this angle, the whole of Yaichi glows silver, giving him the air of something ethereal. Masa is fearful of moving him, even if to a more comfortable sleeping position. How could he disturb something so beautiful?

The more Masa looks at him, the more he is sure it was Yaichi in his dream. In a silent exhale, he lets go of his nervousness; of course, it being so ingrained in him, anxious flutters remain trapped in his chest, but he is somewhat calmer now.

_I'll have to sleep sitting upright_ , he thinks. It won't be very comfortable. So be it.

His eyes flit to Yaichi. Strands of that fine silver hair veil his eyes. Briefly Masa wonders how Yaichi can sleep like that; is it not ticklish?

Moving of its own accord, his hand brushes Yaichi's bangs away.

Yaichi is awake immediately, gripping Masa's wrist with surprising strength, eyes cold. And then the frost in Yaichi's glare melts as if done away by the sun. He drops his arm, settling sleepily against Masa again.

Masa's explanation has frozen, unused, at the tip of his tongue. He rubs his wrist, feeling the imprints of Yaichi's fingers all the way to his bones.

_He's in my dreams and in my skin_ , he thinks, chest flutters going mad. _He's everywhere_.

Masa closes his eyes, welcoming back the sleep he'd left. Behind his eyelids, the light of the moon seeps through.

**Author's Note:**

> the tension between them is so thick i like to cut slices of it and eat them w/ a glass of milk


End file.
